How do you track vocals?

Track Rat said:
One of my favorite dirty tricks is to tell the singer just to warm up with the tune in question while I set levels and make a headphone mix. I secretly press record and 3 out of 5 times this will be the keeper. When people don't think the record light is on they lose their tape nerves, ya know what I mean?
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The demo cd my band did I was just doing scratch vocals to keep every one in the right place on the song....... Used all of them.. Tried to re-record a couple of lines and the scratch was still better.
It was our first time in the studio. If I had had a few grand to spend I might have been able to get more at ease and lay better tracks down..

Any way the moral of the storie is ... I tricked my self on accident:D:D:D:D

OH Ya! I record whole takes on a loop. the fist couple of trys are to differing to splice together but, after that I can pick two tracks that I can build into one. If all else fails I will punch in on the built track but it is harder to make it fit that way. I try to splice tracks only in between chorus' and verses so the feel and intensety don't vary from line to line. You know I only cutt at major breaks in the vocals.

F.S.
 
VOXVENDOR said:

"Load up on guns"..... Then I do it over and over (loop record) and get it perfect..... And then move on to "Bring your friends"
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Dude, that sounds like something Billy Corgan would do... kinda anal, but I've heard your stuff and it works for ya. Maybe I should try that out, but I always have a fear of tracks not lining up right so it might be scary to have like a million files with different starting times.

Usually for vocals, if you can call my mouth noise that, I go through a "scratch" take to get the feel down, and then one of my roomates comes home so it becomes the final because I can't stand singing with them here. So your technique might come in handy cause I could work a little at a time.

Nothing like overcoming one fear to not face another! Avoidance rules!!!

Rock on!
Pat
 
I'd prefer to do it in one take but I always have to go back and punch in, usually 60 or 70 times. Lately I'll set a sizeable chunk of singing up as a segment to punch in for. If I have something I really like, I may punch in tiny bits to fix a problem elsewhere but I usually save the track out with a name like "good first line" and comp it in later. Then I comp 2 or 3 vocals takes together (if you've heard any of my stuff you're probably laughing at this point ) and come up with the final track Typically I also end up comping the comped track with subsequent tracking sessions etc...

I don't like using copied audio, I do that mostly when I'm writing and/or working on form either to change stuff around or fix a glaring mistake that's ruining the flow of the song. I have a bit of it in some stuff, but mostly because I'm expecting to retrack it.
 
Man, I am way old school. I try to get it right the whole way thru. I try and sing it all the way thru and get it right. My voice only holds out for about 5 takes that way, but...I hate comping or punching in because I always get the levels off and then it sounds unnatural. I come from an old cassette based format and that was hard as hell to punch in or comp so I still have that mentality in my digital recordings
 
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